18th century at the 20th century

1702: Foundation of the observatory of Marseilles.

1707:Invasion of Provence by the united armies, at the time of the war of succession of Spain.

1709: Un other misfortune, more terrible still, fell down on Provence. The winter was rigorous. The cold was so sharp that the olive-trees froze, and that the vines and all the fruit trees perished! Never country was more close to a complete ruin.

1720 : In May the plague was brought to Marseilles by the Chateau captain, controlling “Grand-Saint-Antoine ”. The plague broke out with an extraordinary intensity, and Marseilles presented soon the aspect of a mass grave. Of the old city the epidemic gained the rich districts and attacked even the suburbs. The number of deaths was so alarming that the undertaker's assistants, the corbels as one called them, were not enough more to bury them. One was obliged to give them for auxiliaries the convicts of the galères, and still almost all succumbed to this being repugnant task.

The bishop of Marseilles, Belsunce, and the priests of its diocese, inter alia the Millay father, announced themselves for their devotion to look after and comfort the patients. Far from fleeing towards its country house, or being locked up in its palate, it announced that it would remain at its station and would fill all the duties of its load. Its charity was without limits. Not only it devoted the incomes of its diocese to the relief of its flocks, but it alienated even for them most of its inheritance.
But Belsunce was not the only one to sacrifice itself.
One can quote, the aldermen of Marseilles, Estelle, Moustier, Audimar, Dieudé and the viguier marquis de Pille, and their lieutenants baillif de Langeron, Roze knight , like Capus, Pichatty de Croissainte, Tightens, Doctor Peyssonnel, Bertrand, the director of the hospital Bruno-Garnier. One could not admire them too much heroism. They carried out in person the removal of the corpses which encumbered the houses and the streets. From Marseilles the plague had gained the immediate suburbs and soon the principal towns of Provence. In Aix, in Toulon, in Avignon, in Arles the devastations were terrible. For long years, was prolonged, in all the South of France, the repercussion of the plague which had tested it so hard. 39.055 victims had succumbed.

1722 : August, the plague reappears. Happily there were not this time 260 people reached by the disease.

1757 : Sight of the Port of Marseilles

1761 : After resounding debates, the Parliament of Aix and that of Paris issue the abolition of the Society of Jesus.

Plan de Marseille en 1764 par Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) Titre : Carte de la baye de Marseille / [Bellin] Publication [Paris] : [s.n.], [ca 1764]
Plan of Marseilles in 1764 per Jacques-Nicolas Bellin

In February and July 1766 Stops of the consulting of Marseilles ordering a financial reform to cleanse finances of the city.

In September 1766 the king gives again a place with noble with the Council of the Town hall of Marseilles.

1774 : Louis XVI king de France
May 14, 1784 On the insistence of Fayette, the French Minister for Finances, Calonne, publishes a making decree of the wearing of Bayonne, Marseilles and Dunkirk and Lorient of the francs ports for the Franco-American trade.

December 29, 1788 Marseilles claims the increase in the number of the elected officials of the third state and the vote per capita with the States General.

1789 : Preludes of the Revolution.
March 23, under pretext of the dearness of the food, crowd went in tumult in I' Town hall. The women, the hands full of sand to throw to the figure of the starvers, filled of their cries the accesses of the Town hall.
It is which, the following day, devastated the house of an enriched butcher, Rebuffel and would have plundered the rich person stores of Bank-New where the traders deposited their goods, if they had not been defended by a guard
impromptu main road. It was the first of these revolutionary days which were to be so often renewed and to so to speak put Marseilles at the avant-garde of the Revolution.
August 19: New riot in connection with a futile question of uniform. Mirabeau spokesman of the Marseillais.


83 departments.

Decree of February 26, 1790 : "The provinces of Ancien Régime were extremely unequal and obeyed different usual laws. This decree of the Assembly divides France into 83 departments, with each one a principal city, the chief town. They will bear names of mountain, river or coast. Each department is divided itself into districts, which contain communes, 40 000 small " republics ", provided with a local government elected, chaired by a mayor. One cuts out the cities of more than 25 000 inhabitants in sections."

Creation of the department of the Rhone delta. A radical change was brought in the institutions by the decree of Constituent of February 26, which removed the provinces and replaced them by the departments. All the citizens equal between them and were governed in whole France by the same laws. There is no more from now on of Provence nor of Provençaux, but only France and the French.

1790 : April 11, a club had been formed with the authorization of the municipality. It took the patriotic title of Assembly of the Friends of the Constitution. Warming up the ones the others, they formed the project to seize the forts of Marseilles and to even demolish what they called the monuments of the despotism. In the night, from the 29 to April 30, 1790, they indeed surprised the citadel of Our-Lady of the Guard, and, as of the following day, forced to capitulate the commanders of the forts Midsummer's Day and Saint Nicolas's Day; but they soiled their victory by massacring major de Beausset, and poissonnières of the district walked in all the city the mutilated skin of the victim.
May 28, following elections, Martin, Lejourdan and Julien Brémond were called with the Town hall. It was in Marseilles the first magistrates that one could already qualify republicans.

1790 : By the decree of November 27, 1790 who given obligation to the ecclesiastics to lend oath of fidelity to the Nation, the law, to the king and thus to the civil Constitution of the clergy which precipitates the fracture between the Church and the Nation.

1791 : Into February the town of Marseilles is divided into 32 sections.
April 11 : Deep mourning in Marseilles with the news of died of Mirabeau.
November 13: Election of a new mayor of Marseilles, Jean Raymond Mouraille, Etienne Martin having been elected appointed with the Constituent one.

1792 : In May, Barbaroux wrote to the mayor of Marseilles, Mouraille, to send 600 men to him " knowing to die ". Then the famous battalion of " federate " the Marseillais was formed, that which made known the song
of war to the armies of the borders, of Mullet of Isle, which became the national song of France, “La Marseillaise”
July 3: The rosette blue-white-red becomes obligatory for the civil ones going abroad.
July 30: The federate Marseillais enter to Paris to the accent of battle song for the army of the Rhine , rebatized by Parisian the Marseillaise.
Many executions take place in Marseilles; the bouquetière Cayol is hung with a reverberator, the aristocrats, Boyer the young person, Cadet says Beaucaire and Olivier, Neuzate and Tassy religious Minimes, are massacred, and one hangs about the streets their bloody and mutilated bodies. And well of others still !
August 22: Marseilles forwarding in Aix. The Marseillais report the administration of the department of it.

1793: January 21 execution of Louis XVI.
March 13: Establishment of a mountain central committee in Marseilles.
1793 : april, federalistic revolt.
June 12: Proclamation of the Marseilles republicans known as federalistic in insurrection against Convention.
From the 15 to June 20: The Of Gironde ones take Marseilles, Caen (arrest of the Mountain dwellers), Toulon and Bordeaux.
August 25: Input of the troops of Convention in Marseilles the federalist.
August 28, 1793: Installation of a revolutionary Tribunal in Marseilles: beginning of Terror.
The representatives of the people Albitte, Escudier, Saliceti, Gasparin and Nioche, precedent with an extreme rigour with general disarmament and order the destruction of the royal armorial bearings and all the signs of Ancien Régime. House searches had started and at the same time arbitrary arrests. Therefore the prisons were encumbered soon.
The terrible activity of the extraordinary criminal Court was going to create vacuums soon there. This Court created on August 28, 1793, under the presidency of the ex-teacher Mallet, with Giraud, ex-oratorien, as public prosecutor, was authorized
to judge without the assistance of a jury. Same bankers traders, doctors, merchants, workmen went up then on the scaffold . Their only crime was to have expressed their moderate opinions. On 568 prevented translated with its bar, 162 were condemned to died and 88 with various sorrows.
Under the Content, with the dechristianization, Convention closes the places of worship and prohibits the celebration of the mass.
The Christian cribs of Christmas are thus removed. To perpetuate this habit, them cribs deprived multiply in the hearths.
In October: the envoys Barred and Fréron amplify Terror in Marseilles; destruction of the buildings where the sectionnaires sat.
November 6: brought back from Marseilles to Paris, Philippe Equality, 46 years, is judged and guillotiné in the course of the day. His/her son Louis Philippe, thirty years, becomes the new duke of Orleans. The Common one makes red bonnet the official hairstyle of its members.

1794: January 6, Barras and Fréron issued that the name of Marseilles would be changed, and that, temporarily, it would be the Commune without name.
January 22, the members of the revolutionary Tribunal themselves passed
Barras Fréron
for tepid. They were stopped with their tower and were replaced by a new Commission, said name of its president, the Commission Brutus Leroy.
The judges were satisfied to note the identity of warned, then they pronounced the sentence, and condemned were hoisted at once on the carts and conduits until there Royal place, said then Freedom, where the scaffold was drawn up permanently. Commission Brutus held only ten audiences, and judged 219 people, 95 were discharged and the 124 condemned and carried out, including 14 9 February, 23 20 and the 20 21! One did not proceed any more but per batches. They was true hecatombs.
Bonaparte failed to be, him also, victim of this turbid period. He had proposed to rebuild the ramparts of strong the Saint Nicolas's Day. Maignet thought that the young General wanted to turn against the city the guns of the citadel and to thus prepare a forthcoming reaction. But it recognized its error and declared that it had been mistaken.

Barred and Fréron did not attack only the citizens: Not finding sufficient the punishment of the Federalists Marseilles, they imagined to be caught some with the monuments of the guilty city.
Fréron ordered the destruction of all the houses which, according to its expression, had been used as dens with the communal Sections, and these wild commands were carried out. TheSaint-Ferréol church fell the first under the hammer from the demolition contracters. One even claims that, in its zeal of sectarian, Fréron had solved to fill the Old Port by throwing there the hill of Our-Lady of the Guard, in order to take from Marseilles the security of these roads, which, since so much of century, ensured the local richness. This radicalism is explained at his place by a total judgment and without call of the city: " I believe that Marseilles is incurable forever, with less than one deportation of all the inhabitants and of a transfusion of the men of North...!"
At the end of February the Maignet envoy replaces Barras and Fréron in Marseilles. The city finds its name.
August 26, replacement in Marseilles of the Maignet envoy by Auguis and Serre.
September 26, new riots in Marseilles against the arrests of Jacobins: repression counter-revolutionary.

1795: Expert January and Cadoy Auguis and Serre like envoys in Marseilles replace: White terror.
February 7 the administration of the department of the Mouth-of-Rhone turns over from Marseilles to Aix.
June 5, 1795, massacre in the fortress of Saint-Jean.
It is in this prison where they would have had, while waiting for their setting in judgement, to find an asylum and a protection, which 127 prisoners were cut the throat of under the obliging eye of the authorities.
October 11, new municipal organization of Marseilles. The city is cut into three.
October 31, return of Fréron in Marseilles.

1795 : The Directory. The Directory sent in the departments, to apply the Constitution, of the covered police chiefs of extraordinary capacity. Fréron was indicated for Marseilles. Breaking with the tradition and remembering that it had been appointed the prince of youth, it followed the spectacles assiduously and did not miss with any the festivals which gave the Bonaparte family, then domiciled in Marseilles.

1796 : In March, dismissal of Fréron, then begins one anarchistic period, which will finish only after the coup d'etat of the eighteen brumaire.
July 19: Election of a republican municipality in Marseilles.
August 18: The Directory cancels the pro-republican local elections of Marseilles of last 19 July.

1797 : Coup d'etat of the 18 fructidor (September 4, 1797).
The coup d'etat of the 18 fructidor was, to be strictly accurate, a military coup d'etat. In Marseilles, in the vingt-six months which separate the eighteen fructidor from the eighteen brumaire, they are Generals who direct the businesses and impose their wills. From September 4, 1797 to November 9, 1799, history of Marseilles east thus especially history of the Generals who followed one another in the command of the place, Sahuguet, Willot, Bon, Bernadotte, Lannes, Pille, Mamet, Chabert, Petit Guillaume, Quentin.

1799 : By the coup d'etat of the eighteen brumaire, Bonaparte reversed the established government, and became the legal head of the Republic, of which it preserved the name, but that it destroyed with its profît.
In May 1799, first " patronage " in Marseilles. The poor children are sponsored by the rich children, this is why this work is called " patronage ". During 37 years, Jean-Joseph German, priest, will be the untiring engine of the Movement. At the end of XIXème century, the patros enter the organization of the parishes like an essential institution and a complement necessary of the school and catechism.

1800 : February 4: New local by-law in Marseilles. The city remains divided into three.
March 8: Marseilles becomes the chief town of the department of the Rhone delta, with Charles Delacroix for prefect.
Marseilles did not have to be pleased with the domination napoléonienne. The continuity of the war, especially of the war against the English, ruined the local trade and the stagnation of the businesses was not long in causing a general dissatisfaction. It is told that Napoleon, when it returned from the island of Elba in 1815, wanted to never pass by Marseilles: " the Marseillais, said it, are not my friends."

1803: First fair with santons in Marseilles on the Course St Louis.

1810: English attack.
With various recoveries the English squadron of blockade made attempts at unloading. In March 1811, they tested first surprised on the island of Pomègue, but it does not succeed.

1813: In February, the English continue our fishing vessels until under the gun of Castle-in If.

1814: Fall of the Empire.
In April, hardly the Tricolour it had been replaced by the white flag, that the English entered to Marseilles and installed there a garrison controlled by famous Hudson Lowe. At the period of the blockade that of the foreign occupation succeeded.

December 16, 1814 re-establishment of the frankness from the wearing of Marseilles (removed in 1789).

1815: The Masséna Marshal, governor of Marseilles.

1815 : March 3, one learned in Marseilles the unloading from Napoleon from return from the island from Elba.
In June: Marseilles is occupied by the English and of Siciliens.
Lord Exmouth, controlling English forces in the Mediterranean, unloading on quays from Marseilles, finished the Hundred Days and inaugurated the second Restoration. Delivered presence of the Verdier General and garrison Bonapartist which had terrorized them during the Hundred Days, the Marseillais were ruèrent at worst excesses. Under White Terror, any political faith had disappeared. One wanted to be rigorous and one was odious. How of particular revenges were then exerted under color of public property!
June 24, 1815 : Disaster of Waterloo .
December 4: Anglo-Siciliens leave Marseilles.

1817 : September 10, suppression of the frankness from the wearing of Marseilles (restored in 1814) at the request of the inhabitants them-even.
November 3: First input in Marseilles of a ship with vapor.

1825 January 2 or March 24 Parti Toulon on August 11, 1822, the Shell of lieutenant Duperrey (assisted by Dumont d'Urville) completes his turn of the World while accosting in Marseilles.

1828 : Les toilets Marseilles.

March 25, 1829 Party three years earlier, the Astrolabe of the commander Dumont d'Urville is back in France, in Marseilles.

Revolution of 1830 : This revolution had for Marseilles triple consequence: a change of dynasty, a modification in the political practices, an enormous increase in businesses.
Table of Eugene Delacroix. Freedom guiding the people. Oil on fabric, 259×325cm. Musée of the Louvre.
Taking as a starting point the the scenes of popular rising of which he was the witness at the time of the days of July 1830, known as of the Three Glorious ones, Delacroix imagined this victorious Freedom, and transformed thus a historical episode in universal symbol.
To increase
Transport of a casualty. Scene of the insurrection of 1830
National library of France
Gallica.bnf.fr/


1834 : Serious epidemic of Cholera in Marseilles and its surroundings.

Quays of St Jean in 1835

- The first work of the railroad which will join together soon Marseilles in Paris, the appearance of the navy with vapor, one starts, since 1844, to arrange the handle of Joliette.
In 1834, there were only four mills with oil, one counted of them already thirty six in 1845. The Marseilles soap factory in the whole world the superiority of its products maintains.

1843 : In July, Talabot obtains the concession of a railway line to be created, the future Paris-Lyon-Marseilles (PLM).
August 5, decision to extend the wearing of Marseilles to North, towards Joliette.

1848 : Proclamation of the Republic. From the 22 to June 23, 1848 : Riot in Marseilles .
November 29, arrival in Marseilles of water of the Durance by the Montricher channel.
December 10, 1848 : Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, appointed president of the Republic.

Following the commercial treaties with Russia since 1846, with the American States in 1849, 1850 and 1851, Belgium in 1849, and Sardinia in 1850 and 1851, one new era of commercial prosperity opened for Marseilles. The reputation of insalubrity which a long time moved away from the city the foreigners, was dissipated even at that time, when, in 1851, the Lazaret, of forty years from Arenc was transferred to the Friuli and was supplemented by hospital installations which placed at the first rank this medical establishment.

November 29, 1849 arrival in Marseilles of water of the Durance by the Montricher channel.
1852 : January 19, creation of the Company of the maritime services of the electronic mails nationnale, future Company of the Maritime Electronic mails. Almost at the same time, creation of the Mixed Company of Navigation.
In June: railway fusion Lyon-Marseilles.
It was there only the beginning of one incredible movement of businesses which was going soon to make of Marseilles the first port of the Mediterranean.


1860. Claudius Rivoire and Jean-Marie Carret create the company Rivoire & Carret in Lyon. Carried by success, they establish a factory in Marseilles to approach their sources of raw materials.


1860 : Travel of prince-president Louis-Napoleon. Napoleon III in Marseilles.
1862 : Boring of the Imperial street, today street of the Republic, connecting what is not yet the Old-port with the basins of Joliette just completed.

1870 : War with Prussia.
"The load of the dragons with Gravelotte "
August 16, 1870 Rezonville by A.M. of Neuville 		January 28, 1871
"The Armistice"
seen by Daumier
- 250 000 dead !

September 4, proclamation of the republic.

1871 :    The Commune in Marseilles .
March 23 the revolutionists plundered the armory of the station.
March 28, the Espivent General of Villeboisnet, controlling the 9th military division, put the State Department of seat. April 3, it proclaims the setting in state of siege of Marseilles. It makes enter its troops the city, unload the crews of the warships, the " Crown " and the " Magnanime ", and prepares to take again the Prefecture with the revolutionists. 4 fine April of the Commune of Marseilles.
One needed a sanction for this insurrection. A certain number of Members of the revolutionary Commission passed in front of the Council of war. They were condemned, June 28, with various sorrows; two only were condemned to died: Gaston Crémieux and Etienne. This last saw its commuted sorrow. As for Gaston Crémieux, one made await six months his execution which took place with the field of fire of Pharo on December 1. It was the last and sad one year episode of disorders, anarchy and miseries.

1873 - Proclamation of the presidential septennate.

1876 : The events of the Commune had thrown a major disorder in the political and economic life of Marseilles. That year, November 5, place of the elections, Mr. Maglione had was named mayor.

May 16, 1877 dissolution of the Town council, Mr. de Jessé-Charleval mayor.

January 6, 1878, following the suspension of the Commission, Mr. Maglione, for the second time, was appointed mayor.
June 28, of the demonstrations force took place at the time of the votive festival of the Sacred Heart and the suppression of the processions. Strong brawls occurred at the time when the count of Isnards tried to deposit a crown on the statue of Belsunce.
October 13: creation by the service of manners of Marseilles of a " reserved district ".
From the 20 to October 28: third socialist working congress from France in Marseilles. It brings together delegates of the trade unions, adheres, not without resistance, to collectivism, and gives rise to the Federation of the party of the socialist workers of France. Adoption of the doctrines collectivist under the impulse of Jules Guesde.
A baptism with Saint Victor in 1879
The place in front of the basilica was modified nowadays as well as the old house of the abbot. To as note the costumes of the assistants and the scene of the distributing godfather of the piécettes as the children dispute.
The children shouted : "Lou peirin rascous, lou pichon gibous". (if the godfather is skinflint, the small one will be uneven)

October 21, 1880 George Clemenceau presents, in Marseilles, the program of the radical republicans, which takes again certain proposals of the Socialists.

1881 : Disorder on arrival of the troops of Tunisia. Following the countryside of Tunisia, at the time when the troops ravelled in the street of the Republic, the whistles left the " Club Nazionale Italiano ". A considerable crowd massed in front of the Club and made the seat of it, while, in several districts, brawls between French and Italians occurred. These regrettable events created between the Marseilles population and the Italian colony a very sharp enmity but which fortunately did not last.
This same year was started there restoration of part of the old city by the boring of the street Colbert; it was to involve the demolition of 178 buildings and the old church of Saint Martin's day.
August 14, a catastrophe saddened the city: while a considerable public was pressed with arenas of Prado where a bullfight was to take place, estrades and several steps collapsed; 17 people found death in this catastrophe and there were 174 wounded.

1882 : Secularity of teaching; obligation of primary teaching for the girls as for the boys; creation of the primary certificate of study.
Jean-baptiste Brochier is elected mayor of Marseilles by the town council, in accordance with the new electoral payment.

1884 : Epidemic of cholera. Very fatal from the very start the plague caused nearly 1800 death, including 1215 in only July.

1885 : The plague still strikes.
One counted 1260 more deaths including 950 in August. As of this moment appeared more imperiously than ever the need for curing the state of insalubrity of the city.

May 6, 1887, Felix Baret is elected mayor of Marseilles.

1891 : Pose first stone of the collector, which had, with a secondary sewerage system, to serve the majority of the buildings of the agglomeration.
November 21, visits in Marseilles of the president Sadi Carnot.

May 15, 1892 Siméon Flaissières is elected mayor of Marseilles.

1893 : Visit officers of the Russian squadron. In October, Marseilles accepted the visit of the admiral Avellan, controlling the Russian squadron wet in Toulon.

1894 : Jean Casimir-Pierier

1896 : Reception of the president Félix Faure.

1897 : First electric trams.
The Faissières mayor signed a first endorsement with the Company of the Trams for the transformation of traction and the lowering of the tariffs, then a second, increasing the network of more than 100 kilometers of ways and establishing for all the courses a flat rate of 10 centimes.

July 4, or 7 1901 A Marseilles, after a serious incident caused by a motor vehicle, the mayor takes a decree prohibiting the cars from exceeding 10 km/h downtown.

1902 : The municipality had to deal with the school needs resulting from the application of the law of July 1, 1901 which removed teaching congreganist. From 1902 with 1905, 43 new elementary schools were created and accepted, the children (12.000 surroundings) coming from the closed schools.
With the same time, creation of the channel of Marseilles to the Rhone.
Demolition districts behind the Stock Exchange, claimed by the hygienists like complement of the work of cleansing started with the opening of the street Colbert.

June 7, 1903, For unknown reasons, in clear weather and calm sea, a collision occurred with some encâblures of Marseilles between two steamers, the Islander and Lebanon. First could regain the port but second ran; 122 people died embedded.

July 1, 1903, First turn of France cyclist, created by Henri Desgrange, director of the newspaper the Car: six stages from Paris in Paris on 2 428 kilometers (Paris-Lyon-Marseilles-Toulouse-Bordeaux-Nantes-Paris); sixty runners take the departure of a competition which proceeds for the first time without trainers (a revolution).

5 August 1903, At this meeting in Marseilles, the congress of the teachers adopted with enthusiasm the school politics of the government aiming at removing the courses of religion.

1906 : Extension of the network of the trams. Creation of trente-trois lines new destinies especially with the suburbs.
Colonial exposure. The parade ground of the roundabout of Prado and several neighbouring properties was transformed into an immense garden of 25 hectares, out of which twenty palates with the houses of the various colonies rose. The Exposure lasted of April 15 at November 18, 1906. This exposure symbolizes the development of Marseilles, carries of an empire which is mainly in Africa and Asia. Marseilles can from now on bear the name of “Carry the East”. It is still this idea which will triumph during the second colonial Exposure in 1922 (Paris will organize there his only in 1931).